Using the Connected Learning framework as a lens to frame my research inquiry, this dissertation explores the potential of Hip-Hop songwriting and recording practices as a new form of music education in elementary schools. Using data from three years of ethnographic study I have collected while working as a youth...
Much prior research on memory systems has focused on establishing dissociations between different types of memory based on behavior, subjective experience, and the brain: explicit memory depends on the medial temporal lobe and is thought to operate consciously through a relatively slower processing bottleneck, while implicit memory is a term...
Very few studies have examined school racial climate in racially diverse school contexts. School racial climate refers to “perceptions of interracial interactions and the socialization around race and culture in a school” (Byrd, 2017, p. 700). The association between interracial peer interactions, psychological well-being, and academic outcomes is well documented,...
As the interest in rational synthesis for solid-state materials accelerates, there is an urgent need to understand the design principles concealed within these reactions. In situ material synthesis provides such an avenue to not only uncover these assembling rules, but also for finding new materials even in seemingly familiar phase...
This thesis contains two research projects. The first research project examined the coherent nature of electron transfer in two donor-acceptor dyads – one single acceptor control compound and one dual acceptor molecule of interest. Using transient absorption spectroscopy in the ultraviolet/visible/near-infrared and mid-infrared regions, magnetic field effect experiments, and theoretical...
If I mistakenly hear you ask for directions to the “shore” when instead you asked for directions to the “store,” the miscommunication is probably an innocent mistake. If, on the other hand, a man misunderstands a woman’s refusal of his sexual advances as consent, the mistake seems like it might...
Metal-organic frameworks are crystalline, nanoporous materials formed by metal nodes connected by organic ligands. MOFs represent an exciting approach to materials design where a material with desired properties can be made by choosing the compatible nodes, linkers and topologies independently. MOFs are highly porous and have high surface areas...
This dissertation is motivated by the decision process of the supply chain team of a major furniture retailer that delivers its products at the customer's home. In retail supply chains for companies offering home delivery services, demand surges are observed at the store level, which translate to a high volume...
This dissertation contains three essays. In the first essay, "The Role of Connections in Congressional Lawmaking", I investigate the role of connections in congressional lawmaking by studying how legislators' deaths impact their peers' capacity to sponsor and advance bills in the U.S. House of Representatives. I focus on legislators who...
This dissertation explores an intellectual and political tradition that questioned the use of natural resources and the socioeconomic structures of rural Brazil in the early 20th century. “Organicist agrarianism” postulated an orderly transformation of the Brazil under the guidance of the state in the name of a natural and eternal...